Cost-Cutting Tips When Building a Home Extension

Home extensions are increasingly becoming part and parcel of the building industry because of the endless design ideas available to homeowners. With homeowners flaunting different tastes and preferences, contractors are always coming up with new and unique ideas that will appeal to new and existing clients. However, such growth has brought with it increased costs of building extensions. Therefore, when you are looking into adding an extension to your house, you cannot rule out the cost implications as a decision-making factor. This article explains the different ways you can reduce the cost of building a home extension

Inform Neighbors -- If you leave in a neighborhood surrounded by other residential houses, then you should know that whatever structure you build on your property must be approved. For instance, if you make a bird watching platform on your compound, the neighbors will be rightly concerned about their privacy. Therefore, as you plan to build a home extension, make sure to involve neighbors. Then, you can go ahead with your project on approval. However, without involvement and approval, you might find yourself in litigation matters that will drain you financially due to fines or demolitions. 

Measure Twice -- Saving on materials is another way of keeping the cost of constructing a home extension low. The best way to achieve this is to make sure that you are accurate when taking measurements. Getting the dimensions of joints correctly plays a significant role in the quantities of inputs used. For instance, if you take wrong measurements, you will be forced to toss away a piece of wooden truss, wasting building materials. However, if you take measurements and confirm them by measuring again, you decrease your chances for error. Most importantly, accuracy ensures that you use just the right amount of building materials leading to cost effectiveness.

Recycle and Reuse -- It does not matter whether you are building the extension yourself or you have hired a contractor, recycling and reusing materials is one sure way of reducing the building costs of a house extension. For example, if you have old closet doors, you can reuse them as blinders on one section of the house extension. Additionally, old floorboards will also come in handy if you want a low-cost home extension. Notably, visiting salvage yards can provide you an option to get unique materials that you can make part of the expansion. You can find materials such as sinks, kitchen units, and fireplaces on the cheap and still manage to bring character to the new structure.